


Winner Takes All

by TheSoulOfAStrawberry



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, In which Martin actually likes Swiss Air, Mystery Pairing - Freeform, SO FLUFFY, Though not actually a pairing?, Though not really love, Unrequited Love, Wow it's like nothing's really a bear, post-Yverdon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSoulOfAStrawberry/pseuds/TheSoulOfAStrawberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When there is a winner, there always has to be a loser... Doesn't there?</p><p>Or, in which Martin runs into a former member of MJN, and previously unknown tensions and a feeling or two can't help but bubble up...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winner Takes All

Martin liked his job. Well, he hadn't initially; the lack of camaraderie, the foreign country, and the high expectations weighing on his shoulders were nearly enough to put him off flying for good, sending him home nearly every night to his tiny (if not luxuriously peaceful) Swiss flat to sit numbly in front of French "télé-poubelle", wondering if he had, in fact, done the right thing. Except, quite quickly, things changed. Dramatically.

Perhaps it was his first pay-check. It wasn't really as if he blamed Carolyn for not paying him (bitter though he may feel, he couldn't feel true contempt towards the woman who had essentially become his no-nonsense second mother), but he did have to hold back hot tears of joy when he felt the realness of a positive bank statement scrunching in his shaky, over-zealous fingers. Numbers. Money with which to buy his meagre weekly shop, and "German for Beginners". Then, when he felt confident enough asking, "Könnt-ich ein Ticket nach Vaduz kaufen?" with a passable German accent, a train ticket to see Theresa, and the sights of Liechtenstein in the most wonderful open-topped blue car; plus an internet subscription, so he could look up how to retune his television.

Flying hadn't left the ardour of the deepest corners of his heart, either. He didn't care what aviation columnists in Pilot Now said about the inexorable mediocrity of commercial airlines, after having whizzed round in a charter firm for, in his case, five years and four months. He still felt that undeniably addictive release of endorphins when the wheels of that gorgeous 737 left the runway tarmac, throwing off the bounds of Earth to cruise above the clouds. Did it matter that there weren't any débâcles in the desert, no more old gentlemen to pander to for the sake of a huge tip, not a single airborne word game to compensate for hours in a cramped flight deck? Did he miss Carolyn, Arthur and Douglas? Did he, indeed, wonder about the extra epaulette, and the days where he would wake up in Fitton, not knowing whether he'd be laying down again in Changsha or New York eighteen hours later?

Whether he did or not wasn't the question. What mattered was that it was the past, and regrets, as his mother had always told him, were fears of things that had already happened. He'd let go, moved on. MJN, or what used to constitute MJN, would only have done the same- he had been only too aware that the witty emails from Douglas would die down, until, one day, they simply stopped altogether. They probably already had: Martin always replied promptly with his own remarks and anecdotes, but he'd not received a response now for a month or two.

Anway, what use was nostalgia when living the moment was what counted?

Maybe he should have considered it more, he quipped internally, and he heard himself drawing a shaky breath.

"Um..."

"You've not changed, Martin."

He was never to have known to avoid that particular hotel outside Heathrow. The fact that he'd flown to Heathrow literally hundreds of times since the previous summer, not to mention stayed at the same hotel at least twice; and yet remained the nameless ginger First Officer with the red tie and polar bear-shaped luggage tag in the ever-moving sea of businessmen, tourists and airport staff; only to now recognise a familiar- painfully familiar- face, seemed almost impossible. Yet, there he was, a smile spread across his face, holding a blue-striped tea-towel and a wine glass.

"A-Arthur! Uh-uh-um... Hi?"

He felt closed in.

Arthur looked sad somehow, and older; and yet, in the hotel uniform of a grey waistcoat, white shirt and red cravat, he still looked like the same Arthur Shappey Martin had driven a baggage truck to Albacete with.

"Hullo!" he grinned. That was more like Arthur, Martin supposed wearily, and shuffled nervously on his bar stool and straightened up. His mind raced: questions, reactions, analysis, memories. Arthur had cried when he'd left, and given him a poignantly long hug which irritated Martin's eyes with the fabric of his shirt, and a kiss on the cheek, which was the first time Martin realised that Arthur did really have facial hair, and evidently had a secret talent for wet shaving. And Martin- stupid, stupid Martin- never got in contact after waving goodbye in the airport.

"I-It's been so long. H-H-How are you?" Martin stammered, struggling to keep eye contact. His heart was pounding so loudly in his ears, that he wondered if he were about to faint.

"Brilliant. I found a new job!" he beckoned to his milieu, "Wow, S- Martin... Do you want to talk? I mean, as in catch up. Not as in talk as in, Martin, We Need to Talk," he chuckled. Martin gulped as he watched Arthur polish the glass almost expertly, adding an impossible adamantine sheen to a glass Martin already considered to be sparkling, before panicking as he realised that he'd forgotten to answer Arthur.

"Um..."

He wished he could say something else. The bar seemed to suddenly have become deathly silent, despite the comfortable hum of chatter moments before. Why was Martin there? He seldom drank: habit from hanging about with Douglas, and from entering German bars and only knowing how to order a Diet Coke.

Arthur set the glass down on the counter, and suddenly, had hold of Martin's sleeve, where three stripes of gold adorned his jacket. Martin jumped, even more nervous with the proximity of their faces and the way Arthur seemed to have more lines on his fact that last time, especially considering that it had only been a relatively short while since he'd thrown in his hat at the failing charter firm; and the man was still of the ripe age of... thirty-one?

"So this is what it was all for?" Arthur remarked. Martin initially felt offended, but there was no malice in Arthur's voice, and, when he looked up, and Martin met his kind chestnut eyes, it occurred to him that the comment was merely inquisitive. Though as for his eyes- his eyes were definitely sad.

Martin felt guilty all of a sudden.

Arthur tugged on his sleeve.

"Take it off," he winked, to which Martin was wholly unsure of how to react. It was strange enough meeting Arthur in the busiest airport in the UK, working seemingly by himself behind a bar in a hotel, and who kept addressing him as "Martin". Yet, being asked to...

He rocked back on his bar stool, lurching slightly as he pulled the fabric of his pilot uniform from the minute grasp of Arthur's thumb and index finger. Except, maybe he'd had too much wine (as one glass of Tesco Finest Merlot was normally sufficient to have him unsteady in his newly-reheeled shoes), or it was the wobbly barstool: either way, Martin was not free from Arthur's terrifying new assertiveness for long, as he nearly toppled backwards, and Arthur reached out and clutched his wrist, to stop him careering into the elegantly tall waiter behind him, carrying what seemed to be ten champagne flutes in each hand.

When Martin gathered his senses moments later, he realised that the man sat next to him, a balding fellow nursing a Pernod, was regarding him with one eyebrow cocked. He could feel his cheeks burning salmon as he followed Arthur to the end of the bar, where Arthur took hold of his hand again- calm, impassive, assertive, qualities Martin was unnerved by seeing in Arthur- and ushered him behind a drinks cabinet.

"Arthur-" Martin could barely repress the squeak of indignance in his voice. He'd thought, since moving to Switzerland, and no longer having to endure neither the humility of sharing his flat with down-and-out eighteen year olds, nor the sharp-ended jibes from none other than Douglas Richardson, that he'd had his fair share of embarrassment. And yet, there he was, being treated like the ridiculous little man he'd done his best to hide from his new colleagues. By Arthur bloody Shappey.

"Just take your jacket off, trust me," Arthur quelled his protests in an urgent yet light-toned whisper, and Martin acquiesced, slipping off the jacket, in exchange for, it seemed, Arthur's waistcoat.

Who, indeed, Martin thought, was this strange Arthur imposter? He couldn't say he saw the attraction of having to pretend to be Arthur, or what any potential imposter would gain from so cunningly taking on the former steward's identity.

The man, who may or may not have been Arthur, tucked his jacket behind some whiskey bottles (no Talisker, Martin noted, not that this fact surprised him particularly) and led him behind the bar, back past the man with the aniseed fixation, to the other end, where there stood a man in the same uniform as... Martin's. Or the same as Arthur's had been, but with a red tie instead of a cravat.

Martin wondered if the cravat had been of Arthur's own choosing.

"Hey, Steve! I'm going to take my break now, if that's OK."

"Yeah, no problem. And you too...?" Steve was looking inquiringly at Martin.

"...Guy," Arthur filled it, and it sounded so ridiculous, so made-up, that Martin nearly snorted with laughter. He didn't though. All he could think of was Arthur playing mystery passenger and using his own name, and it was giving him a heavy feeling in his chest that he normally sated by curling up on his bed and Skyping Theresa in the dark.

"Um... Y-Y-Yes," Martin fumbled words over his tongue. God, he was pathetic.

Steve, however, seemed satisfied, and waved his hand at Arthur, and they set off again. Back down to the other end of the bar and out once more, but instead of having a spontaneous rendez-vous behind the drinks cabinet, Arthur led Martin through a wide door on his left, into what appeared to be a wide conference room, inhabited with six round dinner tables dressed in white linen and decorated with three knives, two forks, a dessert spoon, a teaspoon, a side plate, and three similar yet different-sized glasses, per setting. Unfortunately for Martin, who had yet to buy himself any dinner, the settings were not for their use, and Arthur instead took him through one of many doors on the side of the room, down the dimly lit corridor, through another door on their left, and an immediate right into the staff break-room.

"Hungry?" Arthur asked, and Martin shrugged. Not that Arthur paid any attention, making two Pot Noodles and large mugs of tea, and setting them down in front of Martin, where he'd chosen to sit on the sofa in the corner of the room. Martin found himself smiling at the Pot Noodle, wondering if Arthur was aware how many of those he'd eaten of them over the years. Not to mention, the one time he was trying to put himself through his third CPL, and got scurvy because he didn't have anything else around.

Indeed, the pilot-in-training, with scurvy... He had been the laughing stock of Daventry General.

"Best seat in the house!" Arthur assured him as he lowered himself into the seat next to Martin. "Wow! So... Martin. Brilliant. How are you? How's Switzerland?"

It wasn't just about Martin though. It was easy to forget: he'd never had to deal with the consequences of a folding company, of a friend- a best friend? (Maybe he flattered himself, but Martin was pretty sure neither of them really felt quite the same about Douglas than they did each other. Perhaps it was age. Perhaps it was the fact that, at the end of the day, Douglas could turn his back on anything, and, unlike Martin, come out emotionally unscathed.) He'd never have to face up to the prospect of losing his job- at least, not in the same way- or his livelihood. It was why he looked older. Martin leaving. It was the reason he looked tired, and his eyes didn't sparkle quite as much, and there wasn't quite the same inexorable ebullient nature to him, singing in his voice.

Where did he start?

"Um... I don't... I don't know. I-I-I mean, I'm fine. But it's weird seeing you again. Not weird- unexpected- God, Arthur, what are you doing here?"

"Working, Martin-"

"Stop calling me Martin."

"But it's your name," Arthur protested, undeterred by Martin's outburst. The former captain sighed, and loosened his tie as he swivelled to look at Arthur sipping his tea.

Sipping. Not slurping.

"I-I know. Ignore me, sorry."

Silence.

"Mr Crieff...?"

"Mr...?! Arthur, it's fine, seriously... J-J-Just call me Martin. B-But try not to use my name. Can you do that?"

"Oh... OK." Arthur went silent, and looked up from the warm surface of his tea to drink in Martin's being. He could feel himself being analysed in an Arthur-y process, each different feature being clocked and noted in the corner of Martin's vision.

"Switzerland's OK. Um... It's hard to know what to say. I-I tell my mum about it most weeks, so I'm not... I've got a nice flat, I suppose. Minimalistic, but nice. Mm. And... err... The airline's nice." Saying "nice" all the time sounded so drab. "And Theresa... She asked after you and Douglas. Maxi only asked about you," he chuckled, "And... ummmm... Well, I-I guess-"

Martin had stopped himself. He'd suddenly become hyperaware of a fact that had been staring him in the face for the long moments since he and Arthur had crossed paths. And that was the fact that Arthur was working in Heathrow. Meaning he was living in London. Which could only mean he was on his own.

"Arthur, is your mum... alright?" Martin asked cautiously.

Arthur's face was dangerously unreadable as he set his mug down of the squat coffee table.

"Yeah... She moved to Scotland. With Herc."

Martin breathed a small sigh of relief, yet found himself uneasy to shake the empty feeling in his stomach, asking himself if someone would have told him if something had happened to Carolyn.

"And so you're here."

"Yeah, I got a flat. I've always wanted to move out... Not that I didn't like Mum, Mum's brilliant. But Herc wanted to move in and she nee- wanted to get a smaller house and then I needed to find a job so I thought, y'know, maybe it would be better if I were to move away a bit. Except, it turns out, we ended up moving away quite a bit. A lot. Scotland's really really far away when we've not got GERT-I anymore."

Martin didn't dare ask what had happened to the aeroplane. Douglas had given hints after he'd left as to what might come of her, but Martin had barely needed them. One didn't need to be Miss Marple to connect the dots.

"What... What do you think of London, then?" Martin asked, squirming.

"Brilliant! Yeah. I work quite a bit actually, but it's OK because I quite like it. Not as much as I liked being an air steward- wait, I didn't mean for that to sound bad, it's just a job preference, you know... Um... We get a lot of pilots and air hostesses and some of them're captains like yo- I... Err... Like... Like we had one last week. He was tall, and... and..." Arthur stopped.

Looking down at his now over-cooked noodles, he gave a sigh, and a sense of calm seem to spread across his body.

"I miss it," he sniffed. Selfish though it may have been, Martin was thankful that he wasn't crying. Had he ever seen Arthur cry? It was irrelevant, really: he had entered a realm in which Arthur had changed, and he hadn't. And, while he still liked Arthur, he felt distanced, somehow.

"So do I. I'm sorry."

And then it hit him with an awful pang- that Arthur being the way he was now, Carolyn moving away from her son, Douglas losing contact: it was Martin distancing himself.

Arthur rounded on him, frowning. Now, he'd certainly never seen Arthur frowning, because it was a sight that he was sure he wouldn't forget in a hurry. Contrarily, it was an image burnt into his retinas for a huge moment, before he opened his mouth and the truth; the years of smiles and giggling and word games and jibes, came tumbling out at Martin, and Martin alone.

"No you're not, Skip! You're not sorry: you didn't have to see Mum crying when she gave GERT-I away to Dad, and you can still fly around in aeroplanes all day! With all due respect, you didn't loose your job, or your family, or your friends, or the brilliantness of having exciting adventures every time we lifted off... And I still can't think of anything better than going up in GERT-I with you and Douglas and Mum, except that's never going to happen again because you live in Switzerland and Mum lives in Scotland and I don't know where Douglas lives but it's definitely not Daventry anymore. And I wanted to sa... We... We could have..."

"What, Arthur? What on Earth could you have done about it?" Martin snapped, and broke.

He hadn't cried when he'd left. Or in Switzerland, when he'd arrived; single man with a few pitiful cardboard boxes of possessions. He'd found it weird, since he made a habit of being a bit of a cry-baby. However, it was obvious now that he'd not detached himself entirely from the situation. If anything, it was probably worse, having tried, however unconsciously, to supress his feelings at the beginning, as it made it all the more painful dealing with the realisations Arthur had unknowingly bestowed upon him.

On one hand, he felt like such an idiot. On the other, it was nice to have Arthur half-pull, half-drag him into a warm, sugary, aftershave-scented embrace, regardless of whether he suddenly become aware of quite how much taller Arthur was than him.

"I-I-It wasn't easy," Martin felt he should point out, but his excuses were muffled in Arthur's shirt. He was glad no one else was in the staff room, as he quite liked being there, held by somebody for once, no matter how dramatically inappropriate to both their relationship and surroundings.

"It's not easy for me either, Sk- Martin."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be, because Mum said it was going to happen one day and I know I shouldn't have yelled at you."

"Yeah...?" There was a pause. Martin could hear Arthur's heartbeat. It was somewhere between normal and what would be described as "racing".

"I mean, she said a lot of other stuff too, about independence and about you... Quite a bit about you, but I don't remember all of it and I think she was really drunk at the time, because Herc had to help her up the stairs to bed, so she didn't really mean it."

"Not... Not good, then?" he sighed. Arthur didn't answer. At least, not with words, but he found Martin's hand and squeezed it, a friendly little gesture that reminded Martin exactly what was so endearing... or rather, brilliant, about Arthur: that while he may have come across as a clot, he really did understand. Or he no longer came across as a clot exactly, but still understood. What would be a word to describe Arthur now? Enigmatic? Changed? Lost?

There was a clunk at the door, and Martin had to think for a moment before he shot out of Arthur's arms. A blonde-haired girl of about eighteen loitered in the doorway, fiddling her neck tie, looking between Arthur and Martin.

"Uuh." Martin felt his face flush beetroot

"Hullo Katie," Arthur beamed, and Martin cursed him internally, for not falling into a gauche trap of panicking when meeting someone after a period of loneliness, or intimacy.

"Oh... Er... Arthur. Andrew's here?" She Americanised her speech, adding an intonation of questioning at the end of her point, as if unsure of the very words crossing the thresholds of her lips.

Martin let go of Arthur's hand.

"But he's not supposed to be into today. Oh no."

"No- um, it's not bad? But he says he's here now, so Steve says you may as well leave now?"

"Oh."

Martin was too busy trying to avoid eye contact with the girl to pick up on the stunted disappointment in his voice.

"So, is this your...?" She gestured vaguely in Martin's direction, and a shot of indignation shot through Martin at being referred to as "this", as well as being mistaken, it seemed, for Arthur's bit on the side. For one thing, Arthur could do better than just Martin-

"Um... Yes. Don't tell though, please... Brilliant. Right, I'll be off then. Just so I know, and don't have to get all confused or anything when I'm not sure, I'm not in this evening then?" He was stood up now.

"Not unless you're desperate," the girl replied, swinging out of the door, and Arthur only had time for an apologetic sideways glance at Martin, before calling after her, "You see, I am, just a little bit..."

Yet she had already melted away into the sounds of the kitchen and the distant hum of a hoover.

"Martin, I..."

The idea of Martin being lost for words was a concept he was all too familiar with, being the unfortunate soul burdened with enduring himself for every minute of every day, including the ones where he was drunk and where he'd been dumped, and sometimes both simultaneously. However, Arthur being lost for words was foreign: he could only think of one person that made Arthur trip over his tongue, and even then, not with a lost expression of... shame. Shame? It was as if Martin was seeing the hefty weight of adulthood burdened upon a five-year-old: seeing the light fade from his before scintillating eyes, the stillness, the fatigue upon his shoulders.

Where there was a winner, there was always a loser. Martin wasn't sure what exactly he'd trade to go back to being the loser, but it was certainly something.

"Um... You do know what she was inferring, Arthur? About... A-A-About you and I, I mean." It was such a petty subject matter, because, God, of course Arthur had misunderstood, and Martin didn't need to pick up on it now- he had no right. It was pure cowardice, the divergence from the topic of exactly where Arthur had ended up, at the lowest of the low: after all, so what if he had a job and a place to stay, Martin told himself. Things had to be put into context, and in context, the pilot did not at all like what he could see in Arthur in regards to the change he'd dealt with.

"Um..." Arthur was still lost for words, taking hold of his jacket (the same one he'd bought when it had rained suddenly in Cannes, and the entire crew got soaked through) and hugging it to his chest. "Um, shall we go then, Martin?"

Martin followed him, confused, and still wearing Arthur's waistcoat, as Arthur signed out on a sheet of paper in messy handwriting- his hand was shaking- before he wandered out of the back door, out into the crisp, dark car park.

"J-J-Jeeeeesus," Martin cursed, cringing at the cold as he stepped out after Arthur. He'd always found it interesting when he could see his breath, but that was normally when he wasn't too busy concerning himself with the fact the cold was actually painful. He wrung his hands as he spoke, "Arth'r, p-p-p-please, j-j'st... I've still got your w-w-waistcoat-t, for go'ssake..."

Arthur turned round, and took a few timid steps towards Martin. Now or never, Martin thought, and, trying his best to hold Arthur's intense gaze, he began to say exactly what he thought needed saying.

"Arthur, I d'dn't mean for it t-to be like th's. W-When I moved to Switzerland, it w's b'cause I thought there w-was no-nothing left for me here- and there w'sn't, c'mon, in F-Fitton? Exc'pt I was wrong. T-There was someth'ng- y-y-you and D-Douglas and your mum and ev'n Herc-c. A-A-And 'm sorry 'bout the way I left, w-with so little notice and the whole not really saying goodbye thing, t-that was wrong, I-I... I know that. B-But on the other hand, I had to, I couldn't k-ke-keep living with students, and 'm not try'ng to blame it on your mum or M-MJN, b-but it couldn't last forever... You understand, Arth'r? I mean, G-God, I didn't mean for it to turn out like this, not... not ever, but I didn't have a ch-choice. I'm sorry. Th...ings, they move on. And 'm not respons'ble for what g-goes on in your life once I've gone."

Arthur stopped. The part of Martin that like to be obsequious to social convention, floating above his head by about two centimetres, and staying out of emotion, wishing Arthur could be dramatic somewhere else; somewhere that wasn't cold. However, inside his mind, he could only focus on the awful feeling in the pit of his stomach, the one that not only saw the way Arthur had tensed, and seemed to be computing some kind of horribly out-of-character reaction; but also how Martin had said something wrong, as if there were two paths ahead of him and he was wandering aimlessly down the wrong one.

"Do you know," Arthur began, not turning around, "Mum bought me a poster from the record shop when I was doing my GCSE's: which were really really hard," the upbeat tone of his voice sounded choked, "and the poster- it's brilliant- says that you can't actually keep waiting for a perfect moment, which I think is what most people do because they don't do super out-of-the-ordinary things every single day... That would make them ordinary, after all, but in the kind of way that no one decides to just go biking around Europe or suddenly whisk the love of your life off their feet.... What I'm trying to say, I think, is that we could end this discussion and maybe think about it every now and again because it was strange and we felt we'd forgotten each other just a bit, but then you'll forget me more and more and more and maybe you'll come here and you won't know that I don't work here anymore because I've moved on, or you move somewhere else, to a better pilot job, maybe where you're a captain again... Or I could not wait for my perfect moment, and make my perfect moment come true, even if it's not actually a perfect moment in the end."

In retrospect, Martin should have known what was coming next. However, in the ephemeral moment before Arthur finished his speech, turning around, and the moment he found himself automatically closing his eyes, as his face was clutched gently, and a pair of warm lips met his own, his mind was a blank.

It was certainly weird. It had, at some earlier point in their relationship, crossed Martin's mind (only thanks to an inference from Douglas) that Arthur might bat for both teams, but he'd never considered it otherwise, being that he wasn't particularly nosy. However, it wasn't weird in the moment, only afterwards, when Arthur broke off and left his hands on Martin's frosty cheeks, protecting him from the biting wind, and allowing his to open his eyes in relative warmth. The moment, in fact, was perfect.

It wasn't out of lust, or even love, really, that Martin returned the kiss, leaning forward onto his tiptoes and pulling Arthur towards him by the waist. He knew, after a long time, what love was, thanks to Theresa, and this was, however unfortunately for Arthur, not it. Perhaps he felt he owed it to the former steward; or perhaps it was a spur of loneliness, forgiveness, thanking, fondness, or reserved rejection: all of which floated in the mist of his head, untangled, undecided, unbeknown to Arthur.

Maybe he was aware of this. When they finally pulled apart, he still had that sad twinkle in his eyes: as if it were Christmas day, but also the anniversary of the death of a mutual friend. Martin's cheeks flushed, and he chuckled, without making a noise, his breath spiralling up in the minute space between them.

"I-I... Arthur, I-I never realised..."

"I know, Skip," he replied, his breath hitching in his throat so that his words sounded sans souffle.

"T-Then... You understand..."

"That you don't have the same butterfly feelings as I do? I think everyone can tell when something's going right, but I don't mind, not... Not... Theresa's brilliant, Skip."

"Don't call me Skip."

"Why not?" Arthur asked, as he let go of Martin, stepping back into the night. Already he seemed fainter, as if the solidity had gone from his body, and he'd conferred all his being and warmth onto Martin. He could feel it. His teeth chattered no more, and his heart was pounding as he tried desperately to think what would stop him feeling like he did.

"I... I'm not Skip anymore."

Arthur beamed.

"I know. Um... Well... I best be off! I know it's been quick but sometimes that's just how time goes..."

Arthur gave a little wave and a grin, a shadow of what Martin had momentarily glimpsed of the old Arthur Shappey, before turning on the heel of his worn leather shoes and making his way across the car park, tucking himself into his jacket.

Martin couldn't let him. Not now. Not this way.

He was half way towards the bus stop when Martin shouted, and there were pounding feet behind him.

"Arthur!"

"Hm?" He turned back around, and there is was again. That twinkle of hope.

"What you said," Martin was out of breath, "About opportunities and how something might not be perfect and you should try them anyway... Well, yes... Umm... You... You should come back with me. To Switzerland. I-I-I know it sounds... crazy, and God, I can hear myself talking and you're fine to say no but we're leaving at 3 o'clock tomorrow back to Zurich and well... I know it won't ever work in that way between us, but... If you took a chance, you can stay with me and I'll see if I can get you a job with the airline and it won't be exactly like old times because things have moved on... But... Oh God, I'm sorry Arthur, that was really stupid of me to try and suggest-"

"No... I mean, really? You'd let me stay in Zurich with you? And take my CV?"

"Is it mad?" Martin whispered, realising that he was clenching Arthur's arms. He was panicking a bit, if he was honest with himself, checking his promise in his head to see if it would be possible.

"No! You really mean it?"

Martin liked his job. Well, he hadn't initially; there had been something missing, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Something that niggled in the back of his mind while he was flying, and frustrated him more than trying to tune his radio to pick up Radio 4 in his poky Zurich apartment, while he wondered for hours where it was he'd got it wrong. Except, quite quickly, things changed. Dramatically.

"Y-Yes...!"

**Author's Note:**

> Um... I don't normally write shippy things? And no one dies in this, either. Man, topsy turvy or what? It sounds awful, but love seemed the only ending to a story that went like this. The twist being that it's unrequited?
> 
> As an asexual, I never got the fixation with love, and by default, it seems, sex, in fanfiction. Hence, I frustrate people by writing fics that should, yet don't, include love/sex. If there's one thing I would like you to take away from this, it's that you don't need love or sex, to make you happy. Having it is fine. But, if you are rejected for any reason, remember, that this doesn't mean the person loves you any less than they did before. I mean, Martin forgot about Arthur, but not emotionally, or he would have ignored him; so he still loves him, as anyone would to Arthur. Just, not the way Arthur loves him.
> 
> Tell you what. Read Ian McEwan's "Enduring Love". It will explain this and many many other things in more detail. Hm. Yes. I hope I have taught you something about life. N'ecoutez pas de lesquels qui te disent que le fanfic n'est pas valide dans ta vie, ouais.


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